- My husband and I moved with our two kids from California to Spain.
- We live in San Sebastián, where both of our kids go to school.
I met my husband while we were studying abroad in San Sebastián, Spain. We fell in love with the culture and agreed that one day we'd move back to raise our kids. We moved from Los Angeles to Spain when our kids were 9 and 11 years old.
As owners of our own businesses, we knew we'd transition easily. As parents of tweens, however, figuring out the school system was one of the most challenging parts.
Our school offers 4 languages
Schools in Spain are either public, private, or semiprivate (known as "concertado"), similar to charter schools in the US. While Spanish is the national language, public schools in autonomous communities — Spain has 17, and each has its own executive, legislative, and judicial powers — typically prioritize instruction in their local dialect.
We wanted our children to become fluent in Spanish, but since public schools here are taught in Basque, we opted for a "concertado," where instruction is in Basque, Spanish, and English, with French optional. Despite only one or two classes being in Spanish, most kids speak it on the playground, so our kids were fairly fluent after just three months.
Children stay in their classrooms, and teachers rotate in
In Spain, children attend primary school up to sixth grade, then transition to secondary school for four years (from roughly 12 to 16 years old). Starting in primary school, students stay in their classrooms, and the teachers rotate in to teach different subjects, which was new for us.
While public school is free, all students pay for books and activities. Students transition to computers in fifth grade and purchase annual digital licenses rather than physical books.
School in Spain is only mandatory through the end of secondary school. After that, students can enter the workforce, attend a trade school, or have two additional years of schooling before university.
They have a 2-hour lunch break
One of the biggest differences for us was the school schedule. Primary school starts at 9 a.m. and ends at 4:30 p.m. to account for a two-hour lunch break. Kids have the option to eat with their families or at school.
The break is so long because, in Spanish culture, lunch is when families gather over extended meals.
If students stay at school for lunch, they don't bring food from home. Instead, they enjoy cafeteria meals like grilled steak and fish, homemade soups, and traditional dishes like croquetas or tortilla de patatas, always accompanied by fresh fruit, baguettes, and water.
Gone are the days of California school lunches of pizza, hot dogs, and other heavily processed foods. It's comforting to know our kids are eating so well; in fact, the cafeteria workers are tasked with making sure students eat everything.
The second hour of the lunch break is dedicated to sports and extracurricular activities for a nominal monthly fee. Options include gymnastics, soccer, hockey, painting, robotics, and chess.
We never get permission slips for field trips
Field trips are done much differently than in the US. Details are often vague, there are no permission slips, and we never know specifics until a couple of days prior, even for overnight excursions.
In the US, my kids never set foot off-campus without a permission slip and specific details of where they would be and when. Even so, I've never questioned my children's safety when at school in Spain, which sadly, I can't say about school in the US.
There's an on-campus café
It wouldn't be Spain without a bar or café nearby. Our school has a café on campus, open before and after school and during recess.
Parents gather there for coffee and to buy school clothing. They peruse the lost and found and chat with the woman who runs it. Students descend on the café during recess and after school for jamón serrano sandwiches and chocolate croissants hot out of the oven.
There was a steep learning curve for the whole family when transitioning from school in the US to school in Spain, but my children are now multilingual, have a greater global perspective, and have proven to be more resilient than I knew they could be at this age.